SALMON FISHING WITH THE FLY, 193 
CASTING LINES. 
The selection of a suitable casting line (i.e. the gut line that 
connects the reel line with the fly) requires great judgment and 
care on the part of the angler. If the water should be high or 
stained after a fresh, the strongest lines may be used, and finer 
ones in proportion as the water gets lower and clearer. 
During the early spring months salmon are keener to rise at 
the fly than at any other time of the year, they will take larger 
flies than later in the season, and do not seem to care what the 
casting line is made of ; but during the later spring and summer 
months, when the water is very low and clear, they are more 
particular, and very fine casting lines and flies, not much bigger 
than trout flies, must be used. To land a big salmon in low 
water with a light rod and fine tackle, is a feat any salmon fisher 
may be proud of. 
Treble-twisted or plaited gut casting lines are generally con- 
sidered the strongest, but these are not to be trusted. Some 
of them will doubtless last a long time, but many are made up 
of inferior cast-off gut which is difficult to detect in the piece, 
and would not stand a week’s work. It is also difficult to twist 
gut so evenly that when a fish is being played, an equal strain 
shall be made to bear on each strand.} 
Lines made of two strands of carefully selected round sal- 
mon gut of equal thickness, untwisted, are much stronger than 
most of the treble gut casting lines that are generally used, but 
great care must be taken in making these lines, as when the 
links are knotted together it will be found that, nine times out 
of ten, one of the strands will be longer than the other, conse- 
quently the shorter strand would have to bear the whole strain 
when a fish is being played, and the other strand would be 
useless. This can be avoided if the following directions are 
attended to: after the strands that are to compose the line 
1T call a piece of gut taken singly ‘a strand,’ and when made upina casting 
line ‘a link,’ 
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